In the past aircraft tow bars have been unnecessarily costly and have been bulky and hard to store aboard an aircraft.
When an aircraft can bring with it its own tow bar, then the right equipment is readily available. It is then unnecessary to provide a tow bar designed to fit many different types of aircraft.
However, for a tow bar to be carried aboard an aircraft, it is necessary for the long tow bar to be collapsible to a much smaller size.
It is also desirable that when the tow bar is extended that it have a rigid length, such that, if necessary, it can be used not only to pull the aircraft, but also to push it backwards in maneuvering the aircraft into tight storage position.
In the past, expensive machining has sometimes been required in the manufacture of specialized forms of parts with many curved surfaces and parts with notches of special shapes.
It is an object of this invention to make possible fabrication by inexpensive shearing or cutting and welding operations and from parts, primarily available on the market in economical forms fabricated at steel mills be inexpensive methods used to make extruded standard steel forms or steel plating.
Since welding equipment is now available for mass production of superior welds in short times, the total result can be a tow bar so readily affordable that one can be available for each aircraft and stored aboard the aircraft, rather than the former way. In the former way it was necessary to have tow bars of different kinds at air ports, each for a different type of aircraft, whereby a problem is encountered for the ground personnel to take out to the aircraft exactly the right tow bar which will fit the aircraft wheel assembly. Theoretically, this would have the advantage that many aircraft of one type could be towed during a period of time by a ground crew having a single tow bar for the aircraft coming in, no matter what their number. But the practicality of this theory is missing when the problems of having the right tow bar on hand at the right time, finding it and having it ready are considered.
In addition if multiple aircraft of the same type should come in at the same time, a single tow bar for all aircraft of one type could not be on more than one aircraft at once.
And so it is an object of this invention to provide a tow bar so conceived so as to be very inexpensive and so very light and collapsible, and which can be conveniently carried in the aircraft itself so that there is no trouble at all in finding the right tow bar when the aircraft comes in at an airport.
A further objective is to provide inexpensive and readily releasable interconnection with simple drop pins extending through pin openings at the yoke and in the telescoping tongue.
Yet another object is to provide a more complete collapsability by providing a way for a rearward part of the forward tongue section to be stored between the arms of an aircraft gripping yoke.